Deadline: 20-Sep-22
The European Commission (EC) is pleased to launch a call for proposals for the Next Generation Imaging and Image-guided Diagnosis and Therapy for Cancer.
The specific challenge to be solved by this call topic is to provide early evidence of improved cancer patient care when using next-generation imaging technologies and image-guided solutions as part of combined cancer therapies. An optimised image-based care path from early diagnosis and screening to treatment and follow-up is essential to improve the outcome of cancer patients and help optimise clinical workflows and cancer patients’ journey.
The proposal should aim to improve AI/ML-enabled imaging and image guided solutions in order to assist and guide clinicians during diagnosis, staging, patient monitoring, therapy planning, intervention and follow-up. Where appropriate, proposals should demonstrate novel ways to interact with the imaging data. The driving principle must be improving and enhancing image-based diagnosis and therapy, e.g. through automated image interpretation and segmentation, quantitative disease assessment, intuitive treatment planning and smart guidance both during treatment itself and in post-treatment monitoring of response to therapy, to enable more efficient patient-centric diagnosis/therapies/interventions and better patient outcomes.
The proposed research and innovation (R&I) activities should result in simplified clinical workflows, for instance through enhanced or complementary robotic-assisted procedures, thus resulting in more precise therapeutic and interventional procedures for patients, reduced workload on staff, a reduction in therapy planning and intervention time, and shorter recovery times/hospital stays.
Funding Information
The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcomes
The proposals are expected to focus on image-based cancer diagnosis, prognosis, treatment planning and therapy. Project results must contribute to all of these expected outputs and outcomes:
- Expanded use of cancer patient imaging data sources, with improved data quality, annotation and computability, contributing to solutions that automatically link images to clinical data to improve diagnostic, staging, predictive and therapeutic tools for clinicians, including image-guided tools.
- Robust evaluation and validation frameworks for AI/ML-based algorithms applied to cancer patient images, to improve image-guided diagnosis, prediction of therapy outcome, planning and therapy of cancer patients.
- Healthcare professionals across Europe get access to advanced, easy-to-use solutions for minimally invasive interventions, guided by medical imaging for monitoring disease progression or treatment response, in combination with biomarkers and other relevant data.
- Improved image-driven planning and predictive tools that enable healthcare providers to facilitate diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up to improve patient outcomes.
- Novel, continuously self-learning, trustworthy, explainable AI/ML-enabled image guided diagnosis, therapy planning, and interventional systems used in clinics/hospitals and possible related benchmarks.
- Demonstrated added-value for end-users such as patients and carers, healthcare professionals, national health systems, and healthcare providers in using next generation imaging and image-guided diagnosis and therapy solutions for cancer.
- Enable seamless and successful further development of the concepts and solutions developed, leading to integrated products and services delivering proven benefits to patients, carers, healthcare systems and society as a whole.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe;
- low- and middle-income countries.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3ub459A